Box Inc. (formerly Box.net) is an online file sharing and Cloud content management service for enterprise companies. The company has adopted a freemium business model, and provides 5 GB of free storage [3] for personal accounts. A mobile version of the service is available for Android, BlackBerry, iOS, WebOS, and Windows Phone devices.[4] The company is based in Los Altos, California.

 

Box received angel capital from Mark Cuban in 2005, then raised a Series A round of $1.5 million from Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 2006. In late 2007, it raised a Series B round of $6 million, and another $7.1 million in 2009 from U.S. Venture Partners and Draper Fisher Jurvetson, bringing total investment to $14.6 million. 

 

In October 2009, Box acquired Increo Solutions, the developer of collaborative online document and media viewing tools Backboard and Embedit.in. As a result of this acquisition, Box launched two new features in January 2010: an integrated content viewer and the ability to embed these files anywhere on the web. 

 

In 2011, the company closed a $48 million funding round led by Meritech Capital Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, and Emergence Capital Partners. The 48 million included 10 million in debt financing from Hercules Technology Growth Capital."There was no capital limit and we could've raised more," said Mr. Levie. Later that year, Box closed an $81 million funding round with investors including SAP and salesforce.com.

 

In mid-2012, Box raised a $125 million round of funding from General Atlantic and some of the company's previous backers, valuing Box at between $1.2 to 1.5 billion.

 

API

In December 2007 the company launched its OpenBox platform, which connects content from Box with other web-based applications and services. Included in the launch were online services EchoSign, Autodesk, Zoho, ThinkFree, Scribd, Picnik, Zazzle, Twitter and Myxer. Since then, new OpenBox services have been added from NetSuite, Salesforce, Google Apps, FedEx, Twitter, WatchDox, MindMeister, Fuze Meeting and others. There are now more than 60 OpenBox services available.

 

With the launch of its OpenBox platform, Box added the ability for developers to create services that will interact with a user's files on Box.com. The API is implemented over conventional XML; documentation is available at the OpenBox Developer Documentation Site.

 

Box also launched its OpenBox Mobile developer program in September 2009, enabling developers to make mobile content accessible to other apps and services. iPhone application developers that utilize OpenBox Mobile include iThoughts, iBlueSky, JotNot, iRec, Pixelpipe, Smart Recorder, Readdle and Kinoma.

 

Products

The core of the service is based around sharing, collaborating, and working with files that are uploaded to Box. Box offers 3 account types: Enterprise, Business and Personal. Depending on the type of account, Box has features such as unlimited storage, custom branding and administrative controls. There are 3rd party integrations with applications like Google apps, Gmail, NetSuite and Salesforce.

 

Reception
 

Aaron Levie speaks at "The Cloud Rises: The Latest From a Ten-Year-Old Trend"
 

In 2009, the Company was awarded the Silicon Valley / San Jose Business Journal's Emerging Tech award in the Cloud Computing category, and has also been named a WebWare 100 Award winner in 2007 and 2008, and one of AlwaysOn's "AO Top Private Companies" for 2007. Co-founders Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith were among the top five finalists in Business Week's "Best Entrepreneurs 25 and Under" rankings for 2009. In 2009, Box was nominated "Best Enterprise Start-up" Crunchie In 2010, and was recognized as one of the "Hottest Silicon Valley Companies" by Lead411.

 

Media appearances

The company's CEO, Aaron Levie, has had multiple articles featured on the Blog TechCrunch. He is also frequently invited to speak at industry events about Cloud computing and enterprise solutions. The company's CFO, Dylan Smith, was featured on an episode of the reality TV show Millionaire Matchmaker in 2010. 

 

Sharing

Box is a file-sharing network, which saves and stores the information uploaded by the customer to their web site. The company reserves the full legal right to demographic information about their customers, sales, and traffic to their partners and advertisers. Even though the company does not have the right to give, sell, rent, share or trade any personal information uploaded to their web site by their customers unless consent is given by the user of an account, a third party may be able to view some information (for which some terms and policies have been set forth, in order to protect the site and customers towards the ends of establishing a full-functioning, informative, and well organized file-sharing network). 

 

With the user's consent private details (such as name, email address, photo, and profile information) can be shared with other users. People a user invites as editors can also edit an account's shared files, upload documents and photos to a shared files folder (and thus share those documents outside of Box), and give other users rights to view shared files.